I have been thinking about giving my blog a bit of a freshen up for a while and this is the result. It is still a work in progress, the about page still needs a proper rework, but the aim is to remove any unecessary clutter and leave only the content. The SharePoint banner ads are gone and so is the post and category navigation. I have also removed comments and ping backs.

The vast majority of visitors to my blog arrive via a search engine so internal navigation is largely unused, I may relent and add the search box and some navigation somewhere on my about page. Very few people comment, despite getting a respectable amount of traffic for a small blog like mine (~5000 visits per month), and the comments that are left are 50% spam and 50% a simple "thanks for the info" so comments won't be missed. If anyone wants to get in touch with me directly they can find my email address in the footer. What is left is simply the information they were looking for when they typed their search terms into Google/Bing....hopefully!

I would ask what people think of this approach (is it too severe?) but as comments are now turned off that would be pointless...if you care that much you can always email me...